Satsang Podcast

Tantra is Embodied Cosmology

Episode No.78

Why is practicing Tantra more akin to scientific exploration than it is to religion? A podcast from Satsang with Shambhavi

first words from the podcast

I was listening to yet another physicist talking about his vision of what physics is going to achieve, including ways to travel in space without fuel, and it occurred to me that Tantra is devotional physics, and maybe even, devotional cosmology. So the working title of this talk is, “If it’s not religion, what is it?”

It’s not religion, because there’s no foundation in belief. There’s no demand that you believe anything, or trust in anything. There is the imperative to experiment and take what you’re taught and experiment with it, and see where it can lead, and see what you can find out, and see how reality and your understanding of it can unfold for you.

And even though we have deities around, the deities are understood as embodied aspects of wisdom, embodied aspects of something to do with a more revealed form that lets us know something about our reality, more than with our ordinary sight. When we contemplate deities, or relate to deities in our practice, we’re not relating to them as things to believe in, as beings to believe in. We’re relating to them as beings or forms of wisdom to learn from.

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Satsang with Shambhavi is a weekly podcast about spirituality, love, death, devotion and waking up while living in a messy world.